Korea. IL-2 Series — Early Access Date Announcement

[Koziolek]

40 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Except that it is their statement so it's only their opinion that matters 🙂

 

Sorry for a misunderstanding, but it is probably wrong wording on my part. English is not my first language

Maybe I should write ".. We should 1CGS allow to say that in their opinion...." then no one could complain it is late. Because I have absolutely no problem with it being released 4 days later than it was predicted 4 months ago

 

Edited June 2 by Koziolek

[Aapje]

3 hours ago, Koziolek said:

We can also let 1CGS say that IN THEIR OPINION summer starts in July so the release in 25th of June is still in the spring 🤣

IL-2 Korea self-identifies as a spring release.

 

[Dash,Polder]

Instead of debating when spring begins why not stick with what we do know, 25 June, and start the FREAKING COUNTDOWN.

T minus 23 and counting.........

[Mr_Tayto]

Excited to see this getting ready to go, but a little disappointed that Steam integration doesn't stretch to EA or pre-order, and that one would have to buy (an already very expensive sim) twice.

 

I will keep an open mind though.

On 11/28/2025 at 5:37 PM, G-SPIT said:

Yes I commented on facebook and the Key Activation for steam access will come at a later date

 

On 5/30/2026 at 9:15 PM, LukeFF said:

No, that's not in the plans.

 

OK now I'm confused. @LukeFF are you saying Steam linking will be possible for pre-orders, or not?

[LukeFF]

No, there are no plans for Steam linking.

[Blitzen]

I'm ready...

[Dash,Polder]

1 hour ago, Blitzen said:

I'm ready...

Filmed in Fargo, he he, 178th my old unit.

[Riderocket]

applying for holiday leave from work on the 26th 

[DedVdV]

Как всё запущено..... .🤣

[Avimimus]

23 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

I am ceaselessly amazed at how folks get tripped up in minutiae like this.

Counted any rivets lately?

Thank your lucky stars if this is all you have to worry about in your life.  

I think people sometimes count rivets as a way to relax and immerse themselves in something less serious than the rest of life. I'm sure the world could be literally burning down and someone somewhere would be eagerly pouring over photos trying to find differences in minutiae and date them to the exact month the change happened etc. And could we really blame them that much?

[Avimimus]

On 6/1/2026 at 11:33 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

At the risk of completely going off topic now, but being somewhat of a nerd I enjoy talking about numbers and history 🤪...

Yes, a lunar month does make some sense. Which is likely the reason we have 12 months 🙂 It's still used in some cultures, mostly from areas where the seasons are less pronounced (e.g. the Islamic calendar). Which points to its main drawback: wherever in the world you are and however the seasons occur at that place, seasons follow a solar cycle. If you want to plan ahead and predict whether or not you have enough food to survive the winter, you need to follow a solar calendar. Most calendars in the history of timekeeping are born from an attempt to reconcile the astronomical year with the 12 times the moon circles around the earth in that time.

Why there are four seasons in the vast majority of calendars is a good question indeed. I suspect it has something to do with agriculture in the temperate zones where most calendars were developed - ploughing, sowing, growing, harvest. There are other options though - the ancient Egyptians had three seasons, the Hindu calendar uses six.

And to go even more off topic, yes base 10 is pretty arbitrary. The Babylonians counted in base 60, while using base 12 for finger counting (the 12 joints of your little through index fingers, that you can place your thumb on).

Oh yeah - joint tally counting is cool! Thanks for reminding me - I should learn that!

One thing I would question though - in your excellent account - is that it would be pretty rare for sowing and reaping to actually fall anywhere near the equinox. So even for agricultural societies I'm not sure it makes sense to have a division into four.

In some parts of the world there are two seasons (e.g. dry and wet), as my South African friend pointed out to me. I think areas where you have long winters reinforce the idea of fall and spring (even if agriculture isn't sufficient to do it)... although because there is a delay in the earth cooling down winter tend to begin well after equinox and the coldest months are usually after the solstice. So your point about seasonality makes sense.

I suspect that the decision to move beyond the summer and winter solstices and divide the year up into smaller seasons (four, five, six etc.) is largely culturally driven... people decide that the equinox is important culturally/ceremonially... people decide the earth has four direction (sunset, sunrise, and north/south to create a 2 dimensional coordinate system/plane) and then decide to organise time that way as well etc.

But I find it hard to have a preference for one number of seasons over another without recourse to more local cultural/environmental information.

[AndreiTomescu]

17 hours ago, Mr_Tayto said:

and that one would have to buy (an already very expensive sim) twice.

Why? I don't get it. If you buy it from the il2K store, you have it and that's that. Why to buy AGAIN from steam? Is it cheaper there? Doesn't the pre-order count after launch??? I really don't get it.

Besides, what is the advantage of buying from steam instead of developer? It's an honest question, I really dunno. I guessed (my kids have steam accounts, I don't) that steam is like booking.com, and if you know the desired location owner it more convenient to rent directly, except for it might be a scam and in that case booking.com somehow protects you against.

But with a reputed game, it's not the case.

So, what are the differences??

[FuriousMeow]

22 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Spoiler

Why? I don't get it. If you buy it from the il2K store, you have it and that's that. Why to buy AGAIN from steam? Is it cheaper there? Doesn't the pre-order count after launch??? I really don't get it.

Besides, what is the advantage of buying from steam instead of developer? It's an honest question, I really dunno. I guessed (my kids have steam accounts, I don't) that steam is like booking.com, and if you know the desired location owner it more convenient to rent directly, except for it might be a scam and in that case booking.com somehow protects you against.

But with a reputed game, it's not the case.

So, what are the differences??

 

Nothing.

I've been saddled with Steam/Epic/other mandatory app front ends and they've provided no benefit. in fact, Steam in particular has been a pain with its yielding to the Steam controller for primary control of games, and I do NOT have one. So I've been forced to mess with Steam settings to get games to work when standalones I can just launch.

The "faster downloads" response is bunk, I haven't had slow downloads for Il2 in years. 

The "all games in one location" also bunk, I can create a folder on my desktop that has all games shortcuts and my SteamLibrary folders are spread across three drives so physically they aren't in the same location either.

I'll go standalone any time its offered over being forced to use an app, that I then have to launch to launch a game.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Why? I don't get it. If you buy it from the il2K store, you have it and that's that. Why to buy AGAIN from steam? Is it cheaper there? Doesn't the pre-order count after launch??? I really don't get it.

Besides, what is the advantage of buying from steam instead of developer? It's an honest question, I really dunno. I guessed (my kids have steam accounts, I don't) that steam is like booking.com, and if you know the desired location owner it more convenient to rent directly, except for it might be a scam and in that case booking.com somehow protects you against.

But with a reputed game, it's not the case.

So, what are the differences??

Well, in my case I prefer Steam because:

1. It's a convenient way to manage my games. Not just store them, but also install them and uninstall them if I haven't used them for a while and need the disk space, then re-install them when I want to get back to it.
2. It has very good downloads from lots of fast servers around the world with good uptime. It also downloads in the background, so I almost never have to wait for IL2 to update since it has already done so whenever I want to play. No nasty surprises when you have half an hour to play IL2 and cannot start because there's a pending update.
3. It has convenient purchasing options, from Steam itself. Opposed to IL2 where you are referred to another 3rd party site (XSolla) to do the actual purchase. At least theoretically, the Steam authentication should also add another layer of protection if things go south between Russia and the EU and IL2 shuts down its servers to EU traffic.

18 minutes ago, FuriousMeow said:

Nothing.

I've been saddled with Steam/Epic/other mandatory app front ends and they've provided no benefit. in fact, Steam in particular has been a pain with its yielding to the Steam controller for primary control of games, and I do NOT have one. So I've been forced to mess with Steam settings to get games to work when standalones I can just launch.

The "faster downloads" response is bunk, I haven't had slow downloads for Il2 in years. 

The "all games in one location" also bunk, I can create a folder on my desktop that has all games shortcuts and my SteamLibrary folders are spread across three drives so physically they aren't in the same location either.

I'll go standalone any time its offered over being forced to use an app, that I then have to launch to launch a game.

I don't have Steam controllers either, and I've never had to change settings for any game (I own probably somewhere around a 100) in order to play. In fact, I have never had to do anything other than press "Install", wait a bit, and then click "Play". Which is a lot less effort than for most non-Steam games I know.

As detailed above, I don't think the "all games in one location" is necessarily about storing or playing games, but rather about managing them. Likewise, I think the "faster downloads" is also partly about downloads happening in the background rather than waiting for them. If you don't really (un)install new games that often and don't care about waiting for updates to complete, then Steam probably has few advantages. But to me, these are very important points.

2 hours ago, Avimimus said:

Oh yeah - joint tally counting is cool! Thanks for reminding me - I should learn that!

One thing I would question though - in your excellent account - is that it would be pretty rare for sowing and reaping to actually fall anywhere near the equinox. So even for agricultural societies I'm not sure it makes sense to have a division into four.

In some parts of the world there are two seasons (e.g. dry and wet), as my South African friend pointed out to me. I think areas where you have long winters reinforce the idea of fall and spring (even if agriculture isn't sufficient to do it)... although because there is a delay in the earth cooling down winter tend to begin well after equinox and the coldest months are usually after the solstice. So your point about seasonality makes sense.

I suspect that the decision to move beyond the summer and winter solstices and divide the year up into smaller seasons (four, five, six etc.) is largely culturally driven... people decide that the equinox is important culturally/ceremonially... people decide the earth has four direction (sunset, sunrise, and north/south to create a 2 dimensional coordinate system/plane) and then decide to organise time that way as well etc.

But I find it hard to have a preference for one number of seasons over another without recourse to more local cultural/environmental information.

The equinoxes are certainly important dates in a large amount of cultures all over the world. Because of the seasonal lag you mention, they're also convenient starting points for the summer and winter (if defined as the hottest and coldest periods of the year). I suppose that if you already divide the year into two sections based on the equinoxes, it makes sense to further divide them to account for the milder weather at the final sections of the semester. And yes, this division needn't necessarily be into two equal-length sections, or two sections at all. TIL that Sweden and Finland don't even have a fixed start of the season, but have them start depending on the weather. In the Netherlands too, we might colloquially say that "spring has started" if we have a period of nice warm weather, even if it's officially still the end of winter.

I still think agriculture does play some part in the choice of seasons. Ploughing happened in late winter/early spring, immediately followed by sowing. Summer consisted of weeding and watching the grass grow (literally), then autumn was the harvest season (the word "harvest" being related to Dutch "herfst", German "Herbst", both meaning "autumn"). Winter was then unsuitable for any agriculture. In ancient Egypt where agriculture depended much more on the seasonal Nile flooding than on temperature, we see three seasons: flooding season, growing season, harvest season.

[FuriousMeow]

5 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Spoiler

I don't have Steam controllers either, and I've never had to change settings for any game (I own probably somewhere around a 100) in order to play. In fact, I have never had to do anything other than press "Install", wait a bit, and then click "Play". Which is a lot less effort than for most non-Steam games I know.

As detailed above, I don't think the "all games in one location" is necessarily about storing or playing games, but rather about managing them. Likewise, I think the "faster downloads" is also partly about downloads happening in the background rather than waiting for them. If you don't really (un)install new games that often and don't care about waiting for updates to complete, then Steam probably has few advantages. But to me, these are very important points.

 

BF6, Stalker 2, Outer Wilds and SOMA I had to go in and disable the Steam controller by default and Steam overlay. They kept trying to use my HOTAS as a Steam controller.

As far as updating in the background, that's not good for performance. The only time I update games is when I'm not gaming. So when I launch Steam to play a game, any downloads instantly get paused. So there's no benefit there.

[LukeFF]

Hi guys, now that the official announcement has been made, we'll continue the conversation over here, thanks!